On Monday 8th February we went along to a presentation by Canon. Amongst the announcements of new point-and-shoot cameras, printers and calculators, they also launched the Canon EOS 550D (RebelT2i) DSLR camera.

If you have been drooling over all the videos uploaded to Vimeo and shot on the EOS 7D â€“ but couldn't afford Â£1500 to buy it. Then the 550D may be of interest.

It is due on sale from 24 February 2010 and the street price should be less than Â£700.

Here are the headline featuresâ€¦

â€¢ 18 Megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor

â€¢ Full 1920x1080p Movie mode

â€¢ 24, 25, 30fps at 1080p

â€¢ 50 and 60fps at 720p

â€¢ Movie crop (7x magnification) â€“ only for 640×480

â€¢ Socket for external stereo mic

â€¢ ISO 100-6400 (expandable to 12800)

â€¢ 9 point auto focus

It is smaller and lighter than the 1D, 5D and 7D â€“ which are all hefty beasts to carry around.

David Parry of Product Intelligence, Canon UK (the guy in our video) mentioned that the 550D has full manual control, unlike the EOS 5D MKII â€“ but he said the firmware upgrade for the 5D is coming “very soon”. I know for some of you that won't be soon enough. But, maybe your wait is almost at an end.

Hope you find this little taster interesting. We're keen to get our hands on one and compare it to our 7D.